Wednesday Writing Prompt (WWP) is a biweekly challenge for you and for me. I’ll post a writing prompt on Wednesday morning. Then anyone who wants to participate can write a 250 to 500 word scene or story in response to it. I’ll post my responses on Thursday. You’re invited to to post your scene or story in the comments of my response post. Let’s see where this wacky world of writing takes us!

She fixed her hair and hopped nimbly through the window

Shayna ducked behind a curtain. She hid her face in the shadows of the green velvet and pressed her body as close to the wall as she could. She sucked in her gut and held her breath. She focused on the wet dog scent of the fabric instead of the damp cold seeping from the window into the drywall against her back.

Just two more minutes. That’s all she needed. She’d made it inside. She’d found and grabbed the bag, and now all she had to do was get out. The door to the fire escape was only steps away. But no, she was hiding behind a curtain because Jameson’s stupid brother was doing lunges up and down the hallway.

As Dameon, Jameson’s aforementioned stupid brother, loudly exhaled on his seventeenth lunge, Shayna silently released her breath. The curtain ruffled her hair as she peeked around the floor to ceiling velvet of her shield and glimpsed Dameon at the far end of the hallway sinking into a plank position.

Yes! she thought. If he’s focused on the floor I can duck out Dameon’s room. When Dameon’s breathing got louder, with interspersed grunts, Shayna crouched and rushed across the three feet of hall to the half-open bedroom door.

He hadn’t lived there in years, he’d told her. He had moved out when he was seventeen. His kid brother, five years younger than him, had been so angry. They’d barely spoken. Now, six years later, his kid brother was a hulk of a football player and wasn’t just angry at Jameson, he flat out hated him.

That’s why she was here, she told herself. Jameson couldn’t come to this house. He’d left because he looked too much like his dad. So much like his dad, that his grandparents had started treating him like he was the guy who’d walked out on their daughter and her two kids. Dameon looked like Grandpa. He never understood. But Jameson knew he would never be welcome. But he needed that backpack.

So Shayna had volunteered to come get it for him.

It wasn’t difficult. She’d broken into more difficult places before. It would have been easier if Dameon hadn’t been home. But he was so focused on his workout, he didn’t even notice the curtain move or the black clad girl leap from behind it.

Shayna could still hear Dameon grunting in the hallway. She slung Jameson’s backpack of his dad’s vintage comic book collection over her shoulder, looked out onto the flat roof and judged the distance to the ground. She could make it. She fixed her hair and hopped nimbly through the window.

~~~

Your turn! What did you come up with for this prompt? Share it in the comments.

Nicolasays:

Great story, Trisha! There was real tension and a heartbreaking reason for the burglary, not just poverty relief or drug money.
There wasn’t time or space to develop the picture I saw in my response, but basically the protagonist is fighting a hair dryer.